Hey friends,

I struggle with two aspects of playing Ahri - trading in lane and positioning in the mid-game.

I find that if I can reasonably survive the early and mid game, I do really well in the late game because there's enough confusion in teamfights that I can position well in the backlines and shit out damage quite consistently. But getting to that point, well, consistently, is an issue.

Laning Phase

I don't understand how to hit Ahri's Q. Her E is simple enough (and is supposed to be difficult to hit as it's a powerful single-target CC), but hitting her Q has always evaded me (well, evaded them, I suppose). And when I go up against Ahri's most are the same - they can't hit their Q for shit. But I've been up against really good Ahri's that make my life a nightmare in lane because they know exactly where I'm going and when. It's frustrating as fuck.

Compared to someone like Lux - whose E is almost impossible NOT to land - I just...dunno. Any tips here? I've seen Ahri's that auto then Q seem to hit both Q's, and I haven't tried this, but does it help? If so, how? Is it because their path to avoid the aggression becomes predictable? I'll try this if it's something that is staple on her.

• To be clear I've looked up the "trading stance" on the leaguecraft 101 or whatever, and that's helped but not as much as I'd like, and it's not always safe to assume that stance.

• Also - is there a simple way to practice this? The practice tool and custom bot games are probably not the best way to get used to her Q, how did YOU get good at it, just lots of games? I play Ahri in ranked flex (it's my practice game mode so it's in like Bronze 2) about 1 or 2 games a day then go into ranked and play my mains (Wukong, Fizz, sometimes Annie). Is this a good method of practice? I'd really like to add Ahri to my roster because she's always useful, whereas Fizz and Wukong can hurt your composition sometimes, Ahri never really will.

Another thing is I almost always sliver the minions on either the first hit of Q, or the return Q, and lose a LOT of CS this way. What's the CS'ing method for the first few levels? How many autos and all that? This is something I can practice in the tool, I suppose, but it'd be nice if there was a clean way to CS with Ahri that I just don't understand.

Mid-Game

Skirmishes escape me as well. I can never position properly enough to get my charm off as well as Q into a 2v2 or 3v3, and get raged at from time to time for "doing nothing," but I simply never feel like I have a "good shot" with my E. What's my positioning supposed to be in these fights? Wait for the other guy to start getting pummeled then go in? Go in myself, draw attention, W, then ult out and EQ on whoever's sticking to me? I just...don't understand how to position with her in these fights and either end up getting blown up or, like my teammate's suggest, doing absolutely nothing and baiting them into a death.

Late-Game

As I said I usually do quite well late game as long as the enemy isn't completely smashing us. I wait on the outskirts until someone gets impatient on the enemy team and dives, then I pick them off and again, wait for CD's to be burned in the aftermath and jump in and murder shit. I'm getting better at changing the return path on my Q with ult, but that's definitely a higher-level Ahri thing that isn't needed as much as learning how to fucking lane with her.

Can y'all help? Much <3. But not succubus <3, I don't want to steal your soul, promise.

Maybe. ;)

EDIT: Is there an Ahri main in higher ELO that has informative streams? Even if it's just him playing the lane I can watch and learn a lot, I think. Mechanics are easy to mimic, it's decisions that are harder to emulate, and while my decision-making with Ahri could definitely improve, it's my mechanics that are really suffering right now.